Author Topic: The end of democracy in the USA?  (Read 47759 times)

Offline Echnaton

  • Saturn
  • ****
  • Posts: 1490
Re: The end of democracy in the USA?
« Reply #90 on: January 30, 2013, 12:29:45 PM »
More people should listen to the song "Canada Is Really Big."

My first time hearing that.  The Arrogant Worms are certainly proud to be number two.

 
The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. —Samuel Beckett

Offline Noldi400

  • Jupiter
  • ***
  • Posts: 627
Re: The end of democracy in the USA?
« Reply #91 on: January 30, 2013, 08:58:49 PM »
I have always found it amusing that Americans don't know that Canada is about the same size as the U.S. (A bit larger in total area, slightly smaller in land area) Somehow people think it should be much smaller. My guess is that people get confused in mentally reversing the flat map projections that make Canada look so much larger and overestimate the percentage of non-land space.  The facts of the V shape of the continent and that the northern US border is obviously our longest are clues to the relative sizes.   A cursory look at a globe will show the relatively equal sizes.

Huh. I was reading these posts and thinking that Canada was quite a bit larger than the US.  I guess it's all those Mercator maps.

I remember reading a comment made by a European just after the end of WWII about how you could tell Brits and Americans - even in civvies - before you ever spoke to them:

"An Englishman walks as if he owns the world.  An American walks as if he doesn't give a damn who owns it."
"The sane understand that human beings are incapable of sustaining conspiracies on a grand scale, because some of our most defining qualities as a species are... a tendency to panic, and an inability to keep our mouths shut." - Dean Koontz

Offline Tanalia

  • Venus
  • **
  • Posts: 52
Re: The end of democracy in the USA?
« Reply #92 on: January 30, 2013, 11:35:41 PM »
They seemed to find it very odd that I had come there, from Canada, to look at birds.
Canada doesn't really count because it's, like, attached... right? (Goldie Hawn in Protocol).
Isn't Canada just a suburb of New York?  :D

Offline Echnaton

  • Saturn
  • ****
  • Posts: 1490
Re: The end of democracy in the USA?
« Reply #93 on: January 31, 2013, 09:17:42 AM »
"An Englishman walks as if he owns the world.  An American walks as if he doesn't give a damn who owns it."

That is a good quote.
The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. —Samuel Beckett

Offline gwiz

  • Mars
  • ***
  • Posts: 335
Re: The end of democracy in the USA?
« Reply #94 on: January 31, 2013, 09:54:01 AM »
"An Englishman walks as if he owns the world.  An American walks as if he doesn't give a damn who owns it."
A version is still current in the UK explaining how you tell whether someone was educated at Oxford or Cambridge.
Multiple exclamation marks are a sure sign of a diseased mind - Terry Pratchett
...the ascent module ... took off like a rocket - Moon Man